What happens when one spouse wants to move? Custody relocation in Pennsylvania

Posted by – September 18, 2012

If child custody is one of the most difficult issues for a family and their attorneys to deal with, an even more difficult subset is custody relocation.  When one parent wants to move away with the children and the other parent does not consent, the party desiring to move must seek court permission.  Pennsylvania has recently enacted a comprehensive custody relocation statute which provides lawyers and courts with more specific guidance in these difficult cases than previously existed.  The “best interest” of the children is still the overarching standard.   The courts look at the benefit of the move to the moving parent and the children, the purity of the motives for the move as well as the motives opposing the move, and the ability for reasonable substitute partial custody for the non-moving parent.  For example, if a father previously had alternate weekends during the school year and every other week during the summer a court might determine that reasonable substitute contact might be giving father most of the school holidays during the academic year and perhaps a couple other long weekends and then perhaps the vast majority of the summer school recess.  Transportation issues alone provide a major area of dispute given the cost of air travel, the proximity of airports, the age of the children (are they able to fly unaccompanied), etc.